Running for Mayor, in Perpetuity; Herman Badillo Is Hoping That the Timing Is Right

As Herman Badillo sees it, his perpetual campaign for mayor of New York City was given a huge push one Sunday early last month when Gov. George E. Pataki praised him with the same words he used to describe a far more flush Republican mayoral contender, Michael R. Bloomberg. Just like Mr. Bloomberg, the governor said on WABC-TV, Mr. Badillo was ''an incredible success'' who would be a fine candidate.

To Mr. Badillo, if no one else, the governor's praise meant one thing: Even though Mr. Bloomberg has been mesmerizing the state's Republican Party with his estimated $4 billion net worth, he should not necessarily plan on a coronation as the party's mayoral nominee. ''He's not getting the support he thought he would get,'' Mr. Badillo insisted in an interview the other day at Fischbein, Badillo, Wagner & Harding, the law and lobbying firm with an open line to City Hall. ''That's the point. He certainly thought by April he would have locked in the governor and the mayor, which he hasn't done.''

All good news, or so said Mr. Badillo, the chairman of the City University of New York. ''It's bad enough to run against $4 billion,'' he said, ''but to run against $4 billion and the governor and the mayor, that's not a good idea.''

Now Mr. Badillo declares that he will force a primary against Mr. Bloomberg.

Herman Badillo, the first Puerto Rican congressman, borough president and city commissioner, has been part of at least the buzz of every New York City mayoral campaign for 30 years. He was an official candidate in 1969, 1973 and 1977, and a short-lived one in 1985 and 1993. He came closest in 1973, when he was still a Democrat and got into a nasty runoff primary with Abraham D. Beame. ''You are a malicious little man,'' a scowling Mr. Badillo infamously told Mr. Beame in a televised debate, shaking his finger at his 5-foot-2 opponent. A day later, the 6-1 Mr. Badillo said he was referring not to Mr. Beame's stature but to his ''pettiness of mind.'' Whatever Mr. Badillo may have meant, Mr. Beame won handily.

So here he is, the Harold E. Stassen of New York politics, back yet again, a well-exercised, proud 71 -- the same age, he points out, as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel.

''And Ronald Reagan was older when he became president,'' Mr. Badillo said.

Mr. Badillo plans to run as the education candidate -- ''If you get a good education you can get your own job, your own health care and your own housing,'' he said -- even though he has yet to declare his candidacy. There remains widespread skepticism that he ever will.

''His being taken seriously as a political candidate for mayor probably ended some years ago,'' said Steven Sanders, the Democratic chairman of the Assembly's Education Committee, who has worked with Mr. Badillo. ''But when the bell sounds, it's very difficult sometimes for pugilists or politicians not to leap off the stool.''

Officials in the governor's office said that Mr. Pataki long ago gave his blessing to Mr. Bloomberg, and that Mr. Badillo was misreading political etiquette -- the governor's on-air homage to him -- as encouragement. ''It doesn't mean that the governor is changing his mind on anything,'' said Brad Race, Mr. Pataki's chief of staff. ''It just means that he has a lot of respect for Herman and what Herman's accomplished.''

Mr. Badillo has collected a string of endorsements, from the Bronx Republican Party to the Young Republicans of New York to two Republican clubs in Queens, many of them distrustful of the party credentials of Mr. Bloomberg, the Democrat-turned-Republican, and all potentially helpful for turnout. Certainly no one in the party is opposed to Mr. Badillo as the backup.

''Of course we're going to say nice things about him,'' said one high-level state Republican, ''just in case he's the only guy left standing if Bloomberg goes down.''

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani's views on Mr. Badillo's potential candidacy are less clear. Some aides are predicting that he will support Mr. Bloomberg. Others are saying that he is distancing himself and will be loyal to his man at CUNY.

''No one is telling me not to run,'' said Mr. Badillo, folding his lanky, formal frame into the sofa of his corner office that looks toward Midtown Manhattan and a windowsill of photographs spanning four decades in the city's political life: Mr. Badillo with Robert F. Kennedy, Mr. Badillo with Mario M. Cuomo, Mr. Badillo with Eleanor Roosevelt at a gathering of the East Harlem John F. Kennedy for President Club (''I was the founder of it,'' he said).

There were other pictures, too, from the spot in rural Caguas, P.R., the site of Mr. Badillo's childhood home, to a more current photograph taken from the roof of Mr. Badillo's weekend house in East Hampton, N.Y. They framed the parable of Herman Badillo: Tuberculosis wiped out his parents, making him an orphan at 5, then killed his grandmother. ''I remember in Caguas just going to a lot of funerals,'' he said.

He came to America with an aunt when he was 12, settled in Harlem, worked as a dishwasher and a pin boy at a bowling alley, and graduated at the top of his class at City College. By 1962 he was the city's first Puerto Rican commissioner, of what was then the real estate department. Three years later he became Bronx borough president, and by 1970 he was elected to Congress.

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''I represent the original immigrant,'' Mr. Badillo said. ''Everybody says that their parents and grandparents came here and couldn't speak English and they were poor. And in my case it wasn't my parents and grandparents. It was me.''

Mr. Badillo was in many ways ahead of his time, and those sympathetic to him say that he might have been successful in his quests to be mayor had the city's demographics in the 1970's, his heyday, been what they are today. Either way, by the 1990's Mr. Badillo had alienated the next generation of Democratic Hispanic leaders. Not only had he switched to the Republican Party to run as comptroller (unsuccessfully) with Mr. Giuliani in 1993, he also then helped the mayor chase away Ramon C. Cortines, the former schools chancellor. Later, he set off a furor with racially insensitive remarks, for which he later apologized, about immigrants from the Dominican Republic and Mexico. He also worked hard to phase out remedial education at CUNY.

''There used to be a Herman Badillo early in his career who championed issues for poor communities,'' said Roberto Ramirez, the Bronx Democratic leader. ''But that Herman Badillo slowly began to fade away.''

Mr. Badillo sees it differently. ''I was reviled when I insisted on standards,'' he said. ''Most of the poor people agreed with me. And the idea that you have to have a double standard for blacks and Latinos is outrageous. They can meet the standards like everybody else.''

Today Mr. Badillo's strategy for winning is first, to get on the ballot, and second, to raise $500,000.

In his ballot quest, Mr. Badillo will be aided by State Senator Guy J. Velella, the chairman of the Bronx Republican Party, who endorsed Mr. Badillo late last month after running his choice by the mayor and the governor. ''Neither one of them said, 'Guy, reconsider,' '' Mr. Velella said.

Mr. Velella said his organization had the bodies to collect the tens of thousands of signatures from enrolled Republicans to ensure that Mr. Badillo's name appeared in the voting booth for the Sept. 11 primary.

Mr. Badillo's other task -- finding money to offset the tens of millions of dollars that Mr. Bloomberg has said he will spend on his own campaign -- may be more difficult. By his calculation, he already has $113,000. More important, the turnout in the 1989 Republican primary was only 111,000.

''You're not dealing with eight million people,'' Mr. Badillo said. ''It makes no sense to spend $13 million. You campaign by having limited mailings, telephone calls, and reaching out to the grass roots.''

Mr. Badillo added that if he raised $500,000, he would be given five times that in city money under the campaign finance laws. ''That's $3 million, and that's more than enough,'' he said.

On issues, Mr. Badillo said he favored the elimination of social promotion, a city-financed preschool program, mayoral control of the school board, a high school for criminal justice to train future police officers and a commercial park development on the West Side of Manhattan. He is neutral on a new stadium for the New York Jets on the same site. He also would keep Bernard B. Kerik as police commissioner and increase teachers' salaries. His third wife, Gail Badillo, 51, is a New York City middle school teacher. ''I'm the only guy who can say he loves teachers because I love one of them,'' Mr. Badillo said.

In his increasing appearances at political clubs and candidates' forums, Mr. Badillo reminds his audiences of how far back he goes in city politics. At a forum sponsored by the 34th Street Partnership last month, Mr. Badillo said proudly that he had been a negotiator at the 1971 Attica prison uprising, when he memorably said, he recalled: ''There was no need to go on shooting. There's always time to die.''

But that was then. ''In the past, I was ahead of my time,'' Mr. Badillo said. ''Now my time has come.''

Correction: May 11, 2001

An article on Wednesday about Herman Badillo, who is considering seeking the Republican nomination for mayor of New York, referred imprecisely to his national origin. When he left Puerto Rico as a young boy, he was already in America; Puerto Rico is a United States commonwealth.

The article also misstated the age of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, whom he described as a contemporary. (Mr. Sharon's age and birth date were also incorrect in a Man in the News article on Feb. 7.) Mr. Sharon is 73; he is not Mr. Badillo's age, 71. He was born in 1928 on Feb. 27, not Sept. 27.

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A version of this article appears in print on May 9, 2001, on Page B00001 of the National edition with the headline: Running for Mayor, in Perpetuity; Herman Badillo Is Hoping That the Timing Is Right. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe